Chapter 15 #2
“Jaye,” Jack said against my ear. I felt his hand warm on my arm and wanted to snuggle deeper into dreams, but he didn’t let me and shook me awake. “We’re here,” he said.
My eyes snapped open and I looked around, trying to orient myself to a new place.
I didn’t recognize the area. It was not a part of Newcastle I was familiar with.
The area was wooded, and there was a high security fence and a guard gate around the property.
I guess Jack had spoken to the guard without waking me up.
The building was rough gray stone with Edwardian embellishments and black narrow windows lined up like soldiers.
It looked intimidating in the yellow glow of the parking lights.
I could see the cameras on each corner of the building.
They weren’t even trying to hide that they were a protected facility.
“If there was a red phone booth out front I’d think we were going to the Ministry of Magic.”
“That must have been some good sleep,” Jack said, helping me out of the Tahoe.
There weren’t many cars in the parking lot, and when we got to the front doors Jack pushed a button so we could be buzzed in.
The lobby guard was a heavyset man in his fifties who looked like he wouldn’t be super effective if Death Eaters stormed the building. He checked our IDs and then picked up the phone to call someone, but the elevator doors opened and who I assumed was Matt Brown stepped out.
He was mid-thirties with dark hair and a broad build that said he’d been an athlete once and hadn’t entirely let it go.
His face was cute more than handsome, but his eyes were a nice rich chocolate that made him more attractive than he was.
He was in jeans and a quarter-zip, and there was a weariness on his face when he saw us.
“Sheriff Lawson,” he said, shaking Jack’s hand. He looked at me briefly and held out his hand.
“I’m Dr. Graves,” I said. “I’m the county coroner.”
“Ahh,” he said. “Come on up. The control center is pretty empty this time of night, so we should be able to sit in my office without interference.”
“How long have you been working nights?” Jack asked as we stepped into the elevator.
“About six months.”
“How’s the adjustment?”
“I hate it,” Matt said. “My body still hasn’t gotten used to it. But the money is great.”
“I worked nights my first year as a rookie,” Jack said. “It’s brutal. We appreciate you seeing us.”
“Zoe told me you came by the house,” he said. “I don’t know what I can tell you that will help your case.”
The control center was a dark room with monitors and different stations everywhere. Matt led us past them to a row of offices with glass fronts so anyone inside could see what was happening on the floor.
“Sorry, I don’t have a lot of space,” he said. “I don’t get a lot of visitors.”
There were two narrow chairs across from his utilitarian desk. Two computer screens took up most of the desk space, so he moved his chair so he could see us.
“How’d you feel when she told you Wade was dead?” Jack asked him.
“Relieved,” Matt said immediately. “This has been a challenging year. My marriage, work, just life in general. Sometimes I wish I could go back to this time last year. I didn’t have a clue. Sometimes it’s better that way.”
“Can you tell us where you were the night of July first and early morning July second?”
“Sure,” he said, turning to his computer and making a few clicks on the keyboard.
He turned the monitor toward us. “I clocked in at ten fifteen that night. The supervisor on shift before me needed to cut out early. We all help each out when we can. I was here the rest of the night until my shift ended.”
“I believe you,” Jack said. “But here’s the problem. You’ve got the tech background to make those computers say whatever you want.”
“That’s true,” he said. “I do. But this building is like Fort Knox. And it’s even past my skill to override the badge scan at the front door, the security guard check-in, the elevator scan and then signing off on all the checkpoints my team is conducting while I’m shift supervisor.”
“Okay,” Jack said. “That I can work with. Zoe told us you confronted him about the blackmail.”
Matt sighed. “This isn’t easy to talk about.
Me and Zoe, we’ve been together since college.
I never would have thought she’d cheat on me.
And then when she told me it was like a punch to the gut.
I was so angry. I’ve never been that angry in my life.
I left that night and it took me a couple of days to get myself under control.
And then I went home and we talked things through.
I could tell she really meant it when she said she was sorry, and that she wanted to work through it.
She said it was like temporary insanity.
So she quit the studio and we signed up for counseling. ”
“That was a wise move,” Jack said.
“Yeah,” he said. “It’s been good for us. Zoe needed to talk to someone who wasn’t me. And I needed that too. Someone to sit across from who could tell me what I was feeling was normal without me having to worry about hurting her feelings.”
“And then the blackmail letter came?”
Rage flashed across Matt’s face. “Yeah, she told me after she’d paid him the first time. She said he’d left pictures—she shredded them so I’d never see them—and that she’d left him cash to buy us some time.”
“I told her we weren’t going to play his games and that he wasn’t going to do anything with those pictures because if he did he’d go to jail.
I wanted to go to the police, but she just wanted it over.
So we compromised. I tracked him down at the studio and told him if those pictures ever surfaced anywhere I’d go to the police and the media and that everything he was so proud of would burn to the ground.
And I might have threatened to run his balls through a meat grinder. ”
“Sounds effective,” Jack said.
“It seemed to work,” he said. “I was expecting a fight when I first confronted him, but he backed down pretty quick. I don’t think he actually knew how to use those muscles.”
“I don’t think you killed him,” Jack told him.
“And I’m sorry to tell you this, but we’ve found out that Wade had been drugging his clients.
Your wife told us how strange it was because she didn’t want to cheat on you, but she felt compelled to.
That was the truth. He drugged her with what’s essentially a very powerful aphrodisiac.
And then after her workout was over he drugged her with Rohypnol so she was incapacitated and unable to make decisions.
That’s why he was able to get the photos and also why she had a lapse in memory.
Your wife was a victim, along with dozens of others we know about so far. ”
“What?” His face went pale.
“I don’t know if it makes it better,” I told him. “But maybe knowing why will help you both heal.”
“We’ll be in touch if we need anything else,” Jack said.
We left him there in a state of shock and made our way out of the building. Jack stopped at the guard station just to do his due diligence on whether or not Matt had signed in when he said he had the night of Wade’s murder, but it was just like he’d said. He wasn’t Wade’s killer.
Jack was quiet on the drive back. So was I.
I watched the dark go past and thought about Matt Brown’s face when Jack told him about the drugs .
He seemed like a nice guy, and I hoped they made it.
The thought of them not made me weepy again, and I leaned my head against the window so Jack wouldn’t see me cry. Stupid hormones.
The house was lit when we pulled in. Doug had beaten us back—Plank and Wachowski had dropped him and Oscar on their way home.
Jack unlocked the front door and Oscar came barreling out of nowhere, nails on hardwood, doing his usual inventory of our shoes and hands and whatever we smelled like.
I crouched down and let him sniff me and felt some of the night go out of my shoulders. “Nothing exciting,” I told him. “Just computers and a sad man.”
He sneezed and went to find Doug.
Jack put the kettle on and I sat at the island. The kitchen was cool and quiet. Through the back windows the woods were dark and the Potomac was somewhere below the cliff, and the frogs outside were going loud enough that I could hear them through the glass. I was tired in my bones.
I put my hand flat on my stomach out of habit, just checking in, and then Jack set a cup of strong black tea in front of me and I wrapped both hands around it.
Jack’s phone lit up on the counter. He picked it up, looked at it, set it down.
“It’s from Derby,” he said. “Looks like his team went through Jessica Contreras’s electronics.
Derek Brummel is a real person, the dating app account is active, and the message history confirms she was talking to him from around nine o’clock until after midnight on Tuesday.
” He looked at me. “She’s off the board. ”
“Dang,” I said. “I was really hoping it was her.”